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Localisation of food production is often advocated as a means to improve food security by creating climate resilient pathways within food supply chains. As a robust evidence-based response to legitimate food security and environmental concerns, the concept of local food remains controversial with limited studies comparing environmental impact trade-offs. This study compares local peri-urban commercial production in a developed city with de-localised production for lettuce, highlighting trade-offs between a spectrum of regionally relevant environmental indicators (global warming potential (GWP), land use, water use and eutrophication). On- and post-farm supply chain variation was assessed using life cycle assessment for product arriving at Sydney's central vegetable market. Three field farms, one outdoor hydroponic and one high technology greenhouse (HTG) were examined. Sensitivity to renewable energy was assessed in the case of the HTG. Peri-urban field produced lettuce delivered to the central market exhibited lower carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) emissions (0.24 and 0.31 kg CO2-e per kg lettuce) compared to remote field (0.48 kg CO2-e) or peri-urban HTG production (0.51 kg CO2-e). Activities including packaging selection and distance to market had a large influence on environmental impacts. Benefits of using renewable energy for HTG production manifested as a reduction in emissions to 0.27 kg CO2-e, placing the HTG as an environmentally competitive alternative to field production. Land and water use were optimised through the use of outdoor hydroponic and HTG production with improvements over field production of up to 80 and 60 percent for land and water use respectively. Examination of a wider range of regionally specific environmental impacts should be considered with any environmental claims on local food, extending analysis beyond a restriction to emissions. Policy frameworks need to consider how trade-offs will be assessed and managed as governments strive for emissions reductions.

The environmental consequences of the decision to urbanise and displace peri-urban (PU) food production are not typically evaluated within a comprehensive, cross-sectoral approach. Using a novel application of life cycle assessment (LCA) within exploratory scenarios, a method for integrating housing and food production land uses in PU regions is proposed, based on relative environmental impacts. Using two housing types (greenfield and infill) and two types of food production (field and high-technology greenhouse (HTG) lettuce production), environmental impacts for five exploratory land-use scenarios are compared for PU land in a developed and growing city. Each scenario is able to house an equivalent residential population whilst delivering equal quantities of fresh food to a city market. The results clearly indicate that infill housing and food production has less environmental impact than greenfield development. The environmental impact categories of climate change, freshwater eutrophication, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation and human toxicity are reduced by 25–43 percent under infill scenarios. Sparing PU land through infill housing development combined with sustainable food intensification using HTG production, enabled multifunctional PU land-use including food production, housing and afforestation while delivering lower relative environmental impacts. Urban afforestation on PU land made available by these measures reduces the effect of climate change by up to 5 percent per hectare per year.

Optimal participation in market-based instruments such as PES (payment for ecosystem services) schemes is a necessary precondition for achieving large scale cost-effective conservation goals from agricultural landscapes. However farmers' willingness to participate in voluntary conservation programmes is influenced by psychological, financial and social factors and these need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In this research farmers' values towards on-farm ecosystem services, motivations and perceived impediments to participation in conservation programmes are identified in two local land services regions in Australia using surveys. Results indicated that irrespective of demographics such as age, gender, years farmed, area owned and annual gross farm income, farmers valued ecosystem services important for future sustainability. Non-financial motivations had significant associations with farmer's perceptions regarding attitudes and values towards the environment and participation in conservation-related programmes. Farmer factors such as lack of awareness and unavailability of adequate information were correlated with non-participation in conservation-based programmes. In the current political context, government uncertainty regarding schemes especially around carbon sequestration and reduction was the most frequently cited impediment that could deter participation. Future research that explores willingness of farmers towards participation in various types of PES programmes developed around carbon reduction, water quality provision and biodiversity conservation, and, duration of the contract and payment levels that are attractive to the farmers will provide insights for developing farmer-friendly PES schemes in the region.

PES (payment for ecosystem services) programmes require evaluation to ensure intended outcomes are realised. Although it is acknowledged that environmental consequences of PES schemes should be considered from a wider systems perspective, there is no recommendation on any evidence-based framework to support such assessment. A starting point to address this gap is that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) offers advantages for the evaluation of local PES proposals by identifying whether an increase in ecosystem benefit from PES schemes is undermined by (1) displacement of environmental impact to another part of the agricultural product supply chain; (2) displacement of environmental impact to another impact category (environmental trade-offs); (3) indirect environmental effects within the landowners property (activity shifting); and (4) indirect environmental effects elsewhere (indirect land use change to compensate for loss of output where PES operates). However, LCA continues to remain an evolving field of science; as the analytic capability of LCA develops in terms of reducing uncertainty, including regional detail and economic and social aspects, it will further help for a more thorough assessment of land use policies such as PES schemes.

Production-location and production-technology affect environmental impacts from agriculture and therefore managing these will contribute in the discussion of sustainable agriculture. This research builds on previous research and illustrates the application of current developments in life cycle assessment (LCA) to identify location and technology options to reduce environmental impacts from tomato production systems in Australia. In addition to climate change and water scarcity impacts reported in previous research, this paper presents land use, ecotoxicity and eutrophication footprints based on location specific factors wherever applicable. The results indicated that land use footprints (based on location specific Net Primary Productivity – NPP 0 of tomato production systems) varied from 0.03 to 0.2 m 2 .yr-e for each kg tomato at the farm gate (where 1 m 2 .yr-e represents 1 m 2 of land occupation for 1 year at the global average NPP 0 ). Results for ecotoxicity and eutrophication were up to 500 times that of the normalised results of other environmental indicators for open field cultivation and low-technology greenhouse tomato production systems. Ongoing efforts to quantify location-specific emissions to the environment from the use of pesticides and fertilisers from various production systems, and the development of local/regional characterisation factors in impact assessment, will further progress identification of locations which have the least ecotoxicity and eutrophication impacts. Relocation of greenhouse production to places which require no/limited heating and/or the substitution of fossil fuels in artificial heating by PV are some of the options which should be further discussed for ongoing environmental improvement in vegetable production systems.

For agri-food products, environmental impacts related to greenhouse gas emissions, water use and land use are all typically of high concern. Concurrent assessment is therefore important to report meaningfully on environmental performance and to avoid potential negative consequences of narrowly focussed environmental improvement strategies, such as carbon footprint reduction alone. In this study, land use footprints were calculated for six diverse beef cattle production systems in southern Australia (cradle to farm gate) using net primary productivity of potential biomass (NPP0) as a means of describing the intrinsic productive capability of occupied land. The results per kg live weight, ranging from 86 to 172 m2 yr-e (where 1 m2 yr-e represents 1 m2 of land occupation for 1 year at the global average NPP0) represent between 1.3 and 2.7% of an average global citizen's annual land use footprint, and highlight the importance of land use in beef cattle production. These results were approximately 10 and 1000 times the normalised carbon and water scarcity footprint results. The diversity of land types supporting livestock production underscores the importance of taking into account land quality in the calculation of a land use footprint. While NPP0 can be used to improve land use assessment beyond a simple measure of land area, further development of the land use footprint indicator is recommended and discussed.

Bradley Ridoutt,*,† Peter Fantke,‡ Stephan Pfister, Jane Bare, Anne-Marie Boulay, Francesco Cherubini, Rolf Frischknecht, Michael Hauschild,‡ Stefanie Hellweg, Andrew Henderson, Olivier Jolliet, Annie Levasseur, Manuele Margni, Thomas McKone, Ottar Michelsen, Llorenc Mila i Canals, Girija Page, Rana Pant, Marco Raugei, Serenella Sala, Erwan Saouter, Francesca Verones, and Thomas Wiedmann †Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Clayton, Victoria 3169, Australia ‡Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Department for Management Engineering, Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark ETH Zurich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland United States Environmental Protection Agency, Sustainable Technology Division, Systems Analysis Branch, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Cincinnati, Ohio 45268, United States CIRAIG, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Montreal, Canada Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Industrial Ecology Programme, Department of Energy and Process Engineering, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway treeze Ltd., Uster, Switzerland University of Texas Health Science Center, School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences, Houston, Texas 77030, United States University of Michigan, School of Public Health, Environmental Health Sciences, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, United States University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and School of Public Health, Berkeley, California 94720, United States Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Division for Finance and Property, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Division for Technology, Industry and Economics, 15 Rue de Milan, 75009 Paris, France University of Western Sydney, School of Science and Health, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Via Enrico Fermi 2749, Ispra, I-21027, Italy Oxford Brookes University, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Oxford OX33 1HX, United Kingdom UNSW Australia, Sustainability Assessment Program, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

Over recent years, footprints have emerged as an important means of reporting environmental performance. Some individual footprints have become quite sophisticated in their calculation procedures. However, as an overallclass of environmental metrics they have been poorly defined, having a variety of conceptual foundations and an unclear relationship to LCA. The variety and sometimes contradictory approaches to quantification have also led to confusing and contradictory messages in the marketplace which have undermined their acceptance by industry and governments.In response, a task force operating under the auspices of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative project on environmental Life Cycle Impact Assessment has been working to develop generic guidance for developers of footprint metrics. The initial work involved forming a consensual position on the difference between footprints and existing LCA impact category indicators. In short, footprints are deemed to have a primary orientation toward society and nontechnical stakeholders and report only on selected topics of concern. On the other hand, LCA impact category indicators have a primary orientation toward technical stakeholders and report in relation to a larger framework designed for comprehensive evaluation of environmental performance and trade-offs. The task force has also developed a universal footprint definition. In parallel to Area of Protection, we introduce Area of Concern. In the same way that LCA uses impact category indicators to assess impacts that follow a common cause-effect pathway toward Areas of rotection, ootprint metrics address Areas of Concern. The critical difference is that Areas of Concern are defined by the interests of stakeholders in society rather than the LCA community. In addition, Areas of Concern are stand-alone and not part of a framework intended for comprehensive environmental performance assessment. Accordingly, footprints are universally defined as metrics used to report life cycle assessment results addressing an Area of Concern.

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 21 (2), ISSN:0948-3349, ISSN:1614-7502

There is growing interest in carbon footprints of products but for horticulture water use can also be important, hence we studied both for fresh tomatoes supplied to the Sydney market. Carbon and water footprints for each kg of fresh tomato supplied to Sydney depend on the season and the type of production system (ranging from 0.39 to 1.97 kg CO 2 e; 5 to 53 L). Energy use of the systems was also reported which ranged from 6.16 to 27.42 MJ for each kg of fresh tomato supplied to Sydney. Tradeoffs exist within studied production systems such that a system which had higher carbon footprint had lower water footprint; this complicates setting priorities for overall environmental improvement. To address this limitation, life cycle impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use were subsequently modelled using endpoint indicators and compared. The results indicated that in all cases the climate change impacts were most important representing 84–96% of the combined scores on damages to the environment. As such the vegetable industry's priority to reduce GHG emissions is confirmed. In case of field production, transportation of tomatoes to market was the hotspot in carbon footprint, while for the medium and high technology greenhouses it was artificial heating. Although the results indicated priority to reduce carbon footprint, further development and harmonisation of LCA impact assessment models for water use at the endpoint level is considered essential.

In response to the growing concerns of freshwater scarcity, two metrics are considered for assessing the impacts of consumptive water use of a kg of fresh tomato supplied to the Sydney market. The first is the water use efficiency (WUE)—commonly used by agronomists which considers the absolute volumes of water consumed, and second, a recently developed method for water footprints based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which describes the impacts in terms of contributing to freshwater scarcity. The results indicated that although a kg of tomato supplied from within Sydney had the highest water use efficiency (38 L for a kg of tomato as compared to 39–78 L from other regions of Australia), it had the biggest LCA-based water footprint (16 L for a kg of tomato as compared to 1.9–2.2 L from other regions of Australia). WUE as an indicator of agriculture water use is inappropriate to indicate the potential to contribute to local freshwater scarcity; potential stress on local and regional water resources, estimated using LCA-based water footprints, provide useful dimension to assess consumptive water use. Having both metrics will enable to achieve short term benefits at the farm level for saving water (through water use efficiency), while also recognising that longer term changes are required for alleviating freshwater scarcity (through LCA-based water footprints). Scenario modelling indicated relocation of production away from Sydney or modernisation of Sydney tomato greenhouse industry as a priority for reducing freshwater scarcity. The latter may be the best long term option to reduce additional emissions from transport and to take advantage of recycled water sources from Sydney's wastewater.

Carbon footprint is widely accepted as an indicator of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Modeling carbon footprints based on life cycle assessment is applied as a way to evaluate the net contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere from orchard production systems over one growing year. This net balance approach considers the sources and sinks of carbon and therefore provides a better reflection of an orchard system's net contribution to climate change. Carbon footprinting of organic kiwifruit and apple production systems in New Zealand indicated that the studied systems had a net sequestration from 2.4 to 5 t of CO2e/ha/year and therefore can be potentially considered as carbon sinks under the Kyoto Protocol. This finding implies that the organic kiwifruit and apple orchardist can gain a monetary benefit by earning carbon credits. However, further research to improve and validate this approach is essential before it can be practically used for decision-making at the orchard level and for policymaking at the national level.

Although many believe that organic systems are sustainable as compared to conventional systems, there is a need to study the sustainability of organic systems per se. In this paper, sustainability of organic kiwifruit and apple production systems is modelled based on the concept of strong sustainability which gives utmost importance to environmental sustainability. Sustainability assessment is undertaken through analyses of key energy and material flows of the orchard system and their impacts on the environment. The proposed approach is based on two high level criteria for sustainability: energy efficiency and non-degradation of the environment. Five indicators which address the two criteria for sustainability are the energy ratio, carbon ratio, change in soil carbon level, soil nutrient balances and leaching of nitrogen. Sustainability indicators are estimated over one production year using two computer modelling tools, Overseer® and Stella®. Sustainability assessment indicates that the organic kiwifruit and apple systems are efficient in energy use and are a net carbon sink over a typical production year. The apple systems mined potassium from the soil which may be a threat to future yield and sustainability. Transition to sustainable farming systems implies reliance to a lesser extent on non-renewable energies and recognising the environmental bottom line.